soursop

About Me

I've been fascinated by ceramic art for 12 years now. I found my beginnings at Humboldt State University in northern California, where I was studying Botany, and then spent quite a bit of time jumping around junior colleges while I was getting my degree in Ornamental Horticulture. I fell in love with plants at a very early age in life and remember quite often tending to my little garden while other neighborhood kids played and rode bikes around in the streets. I wasn't introduced to Ceramics until Sophomore year at college, but I ate it up with a fever as soon as my hands touched clay. I have spent the last 8 years running a couple of my own different landscape businesses and actively pursuing my interest in Ceramics with all my free time. Now, for the last 2 years I have been trying very hard to switch careers and make ceramics my full time job. It's a big push and is showing a lot of signs of working out very soon. I'm excited as ever. Although plants were my first real love in life, the reality of doing very strenuous manual labor everyday, or telling others to do it, is completely exhausting and detrimental to ones psyche. Instead I have learned that a simpler life filled with what you love to do and time to spend with those you love are the most important things to have in this life.

Here are some of my experiences in ceramics and how I have developed through inspiration in the field. My first teacher was Lou Marak followed by Keith Schneider of Humboldt State university. They gave me a great foundation of knowledge and freedom to build from. Next I took miscellaneous community college courses while I pursued my ornamental horticulture degree and happened to study under Phil Cornelius, Mike Hillman and a few others. I took trips to Scripps College and went into their huge Ceramics collection. We looked at, held and passed around pieces of Voulkous, Soldner and many others. After this time at community colleges, I introverted. I was running my own landscape company at the time and didn't have the time to be able to take classes, so I worked in my own makeshift studio in my garage and progressed my style. Eventually I moved from the Los Angeles Area out to Hilo, Hawaii. Here I have met and learned a lot from Stephen Freedman as well as Clayton Amemiya. Stephen has such an amazing ability to throw large and very thin. His aesthetics are in some ways along the lines of Voulkous who's work I was inspired by so many years earlier. He creates massive sculpture through the deformation and compilation of many many different pots. These pieces displayed not in a gallery, but out in his beautiful gardens really made a change within me as to how our pieces are to be seen as another part of this world, how they fit in with it and interact with it. A gallery is so cold compared to a beautiful field. Clayton Amemiya's work has much Japanese influence since he studied on the island of Okinawa under Seisho Kuniyoshi. His work is so organic. Most is Anagama work fired for at least 100 hours using hardwoods. His work made such an influence on my because, it was through his pieces imperfections that I and many others have seen just how perfect they are. But this is imperfection through a work process. It is not forced, it is not necessarily intentional. It is the result of the process, and absolutely beautiful. Truly organic beauty. His pieces fit seamlessly into our world around us.

So here I am now, heavily influenced and inspired by the imperfection of "perfect pots" and an avid student (through books and videos) of Japanese, and Korean pottery. I have recently taken a liking to Architecture, and have developed a line of architectural ceramics for some of my clients. I continue to make a lot of functional work as well as the architectural pieces and pursue whatever is next in my growth as an artist. I'm very excited about this forum as an avenue to continue to be inspired and to help me grow as a person.